To close out the holiday weekend, the Timberwolves officially announced that they have waived Center Greg Stiemsma and Forward Mickael Gelabale. Neither of these moves should really be too surprising for Timberwolves fans, but here was the official news from the Timberwolves PR Twitter account:

First, in regard to Greg Stiemsma, there simply isn’t enough room on the roster for him. Given the presumed return of Nikola Pekovic, the drafting of Gorgui Dieng, and the guaranteed (and cheaper) contract of Chris Johnson, there really wasn’t an easier solution for the front office. You have to assume at this point that the club has done their homework and will be comfortable matching any offer that comes to Pekovic. Which of course is a good thing. [Read more…]

Here are our first round of reviews from this past season’s body of work. Ladies and gentlemen, the Timberwolves 2012-13 player grades for your offseason enjoyment! We’ll be concentrating on the forwards that graced us with their presence this past season. Let’s get right into the season review …

Player: Kevin Love

Season Summary

To put it mildly, it wasn’t a great year for Kevin Love. He broke a bone in his right hand before the season even started doing knuckle push-ups. He returned earlier than doctors and the team had predicted and had a monster game against Denver on 11/21 at the Target Center – 34 points and 14 rebounds. While putting up big numbers in the box score, it was clear that Love wasn’t himself after the first week. He was not in game shape at all and his shooting percentages started to spiral downward – his final shooting percentages for the season were 35% from the field, 22% from three point range and 70% from the free throw line, all well below his career averages.

In December, Love missed a game here and there and averaged 17.5ppg and 13.3rpg. By no means are those numbers to yawn at, but not what we were expecting to see from our all-star forward. Then, shortly after the turn of the calendar year, the season came to a screeching halt for Love. Ironically, it came against the Denver Nuggets, the team that he opened up his season against. During a fluke incident around the paint, Love ran into a Nugget and re-fractured his hand.

That wound up being the end of Kevin Love’s season. Despite rumors that he might return towards the end of the regular season, he never saw the floor again.

Season Highlight

While Love had several very impressive games, I am going to go with the night previously mentioned above – his return to the floor for the first time of the season and putting up the 34 and 14, leading the team to a victory. It felt like it was time to get the season really going when he got back on the floor and my own conventional wisdom had hopes that his return was the start of a playoff run and a string of returning players to the lineup. Yeah, that never happened.

Love had a few other monster games, including a 23 point, 24 rebound night in Sacramento on 11/27 and a season-high 36 points on 10-19 shooting at home against Cleveland on 12/7. However, his return helped energize the fan base; if only for a short amount of time.

Season Lowlight

This one is pretty easy. The Timberwolves season unofficially ended on Thursday, 1/3/13 when Love re-fractured the bone in his hand. He was having a monster performance on the boards that night – 17 rebounds in 24 minutes, and everything went kaput on a fluke play.

Final Grade: Incomplete

If it ever comes out that Love didn’t break his hand doing knuckle push-ups and was originally injured doing something even dumber, this grade will be changed to an F minus-minus. Let the conspiracy theorists have some fun with this one.

Finishing up the second half of a back-to-back series in Cleveland, the Pups came into the game a team on the ropes taking a flurry of punches from the opponent. The latest four game skid moved the team’s record to 18-30 on the season and aspirations for the playoffs are essentially dead. While the Wolves stumble, the Cavs look to be heading in the opposite direction, winners of six of their last nine heading into Monday night’s match-up. So naturally those two trends came to a crashing halt for an evening as the Wolves picked up an impressive win in Cleveland (just like I predicted in our preview … or not). Here’s how things progressed over the evening.

No changes for the Wolves starting lineup Monday night – Rubio, Ridnour, Gelabale, Williams, and Pekovic. The Cavs opened up with Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters, Alonzo Gee, Tristan Thompson, and Tyler Zeller. You weren’t going to see this game nationally broadcast to the masses, that’s for sure.

The Pups got off to a real slow start, as they were held scoreless for the first two and a half minutes of the game. The lowlights included multiple turnovers on bad passes by the back court, Derrick Williams picking up two quick fouls, and Pekovic missing a number of FG attempts due to going up soft around the rim.

Thankfully, the Cavs looked almost as bad early on. They did show an ability to get easy points on the fast break and in transition. Going into the first timeout of the game, the Wolves held a 14-10 advantage. The remainder of the quarter was filled with turnovers and missed shots on both ends. At the end of the 1st quarter, the Cavs held a 27-25 lead.

Midway through a poorly played 2nd quarter, the score was only 37-33. Thinking about this in another way, the Cavs and Wolves combined for 18 points through six minutes of basketball. With under four minutes to go in the half, the Wolves got a little hot going with a three guard set, led by Rubio and Shved. After taking a 47-41 lead in the quarter, the Wolves let down their guard (again) as the final minute of the quarter ticked away. I continue to be amazed at how poorly this team is at closing quarters.

At the half, the Wolves held a 49-46 lead. Here are my HT thoughts through a Wolves lens:

The Wolves seemingly made the commitment of getting Pekovic the ball in the paint tonight and he didn’t reward the team with a lot of points. Very active half for Pek, but he missed a lot of shots in the paint, including having a few blocked by the Cavs.

Same thought again tonight – why doesn’t Chris Johnson get any early burn?

I would like JJ Barea off this team. Have I mentioned this before?

In the 3rd quarter, the Wolves were led by Derrick Williams offensively. After picking up the two early fouls in the 1st, Williams made a few nice adjustments to stay on the court and helped lead the offense. This felt like a nice response from the 2nd year pro. (Naturally, Williams didn’t see the floor in the 4th quarter …)

Not to be outshined by the player selected immediately after him in the ’11 draft, Kyrie Irving did most of the damage for the Cavs in the 3rd quarter. The Cavs scored 19 points in the quarter and Irving either scored or assisted on all but one basket for the team. At the end of the 3rd, the Wolves held a 72-65 lead.

The 4th quarter couldn’t have been much more different than the first three quarters. Both teams executed on the offensive end of the floor and were hitting their shots, leading to an entertaining final twelve minutes. The Wolves were able to build a 9 point lead with four minutes left in the quarter. In their quest to make every game interesting, the Pups let the Cavs cut the lead down to 3 points with just a few minutes left in the game.

Losing streaks be gone, as the Wolves were able to close out Monday’s game and win on the road in Cleveland! The team shot 12-16 from the field in the final frame and left Cleveland a 100-92 victor.

Keys of the Game

Shooting percentages – A standard key to the game for the Pups this year, but this time the team comes out on the winning end! Over 50% from the field and from 3PT range on Monday night and 14-17 from the FT line to boot!

Muscle in the paint – Without Varejao, the Cavs had no answer in the paint for Pekovic, but also gave up a lot of rebounds to Williams and Gelabale.

Byron Scott – I’m not sure who gets the credit here, but Dion Waiters was 6-6 from the field in only 21 minutes of time on the floor and was matched up against a terribly undersized group of guards on the Wolves. This should have been exploited a lot more.

Three Stars of the Game

Luke Ridnour – A very nice night from Luke shooting the ball (9-14 for the game) and particularly strong in the 4th quarter when the Wolves have collapsed many a time this season.

Mickael Gelabale – The Cavs were clearly not ‘ready for this Gelly’ tonight! The SF was 3-3 from long range and a game high +16 in +/-. Mickael continues to impress as he picks up more minutes in Kirilenko’s absence.

Nikola Pekovic – Pekovic gets the nod over Rubio due to being a menace against the Cavs in the paint and logging a game high 40+ minutes. Pek put in 16 & 10 and was active all night.

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